In Michigan, Accomplices To Accidental Killings Can Serve Life Sentences. Advocates Want Reforms.

Michigan Advance

March 23, 2022

Faced with life imprisonment for felony murder, some 1,000 incarcerated Michiganders do not have the possibility of parole — even if they did not cause the death that gave them a life sentence.

A new national report released Wednesday shines light on this phenomenon and demonstrates how the charge of felony murder often leads to “extreme sentencing.” That is particularly true in eight states, including Michigan, that mandate life without parole (LWOP) for all felony murder convictions for adults.

A charge of felony murder is applied when a felony is committed and someone else dies as a result of it. It does not require intent to kill; only the intent to commit the underlying felony.

In other words, an accomplice of a crime that resulted in an accidental death could be charged with felony murder, even if that person did not cause the death.

The report was co-released by The Sentencing Project and Fair and Just Prosecution, two criminal justice reform groups.

According to the research, about one-quarter of people serving life without parole (LWOP) in Michigan — including nearly 30% of incarcerated women serving LWOP — are doing so because they were convicted of felony murder. That adds up to more than 1,000 incarcerated people in the state, most of whom are women and people of color.

The state convicted 35 people of felony murder in 2019 alone.

This is all despite a 1980 Michigan Supreme Court ruling that could have changed future outcomes, had the requirements contained less broad language.

The court ruled in People v. Aaron that year that, going forward, a mens rea (“guilty mind”) requirement must be met in order to have a felony murder conviction in Michigan.

Michigan’s culpable mental state requirement was relatively easy to work around, however. Prosecutors need only establish one of three equal levels of culpable mental states:

The last level has since been interpreted broadly by the state and can be proven relatively easily by a prosecutor, making the 1980 decision relatively inconsequential to future rulings.

Other jurisdictions with this requirement — case-altering or not — are Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Vermont.

California also has a mens rea requirement for accomplices, and Arkansas requires “extreme indifference to the value of human life” — although of the circumstances the defendant set in motion, not of the defendant’s mental state.

The report also draws attention to the reality that, with a felony murder, an accidental death can carry the same penalty as a premeditated killing.

Illustrating that point in the report is the case of Jamie Meade, who has now been incarcerated in Michigan for 28 years after being convicted of aiding and abetting a felony murder 1993. He and his co-defendant planned to rob an acquaintance when Meade was 19 years old. During the incident, his co-defendant’s gun accidentally discharged and killed the victim.

Despite not being the one who handled the firearm when it discharged, Meade was still sentenced to mandatory life without parole since he participated in the underlying felony.

Both advocacy groups argue that all U.S. jurisdictions should ultimately repeal felony murder statutes, but must in the meantime introduce reforms including: eliminating death and LWOP as sentencing options; protecting minors and emerging adults from the rule; ending accomplice liability, creating meaningful intent requirements for the killing itself; narrowing predicate offenses that can trigger the felony murder rule and tackling racial disparities in enforcement.

Only two states — Kentucky and Hawaii — have no felony murder law. Eight states do not offer LWOP as a sentencing option for felony murder, and the rest of the country permits LWOP for some degree of felony murder convictions.

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